Why I Walked Away, Part I

When I was active in what was then called "est," I purchased every audiotape of Erhard tha was available from first "est, and educational corporation," and then "Werner Erhard and Associates" and "The Centers Network." Unfortunately, they are all lost or, stored in a garage, the audiotape it self has deteriorated.

I also purchased every book I came across about Erhard and "the training." When I distanced myself from Erhard's programs, as they were morphing from "the est training" and associated seminars to "The Forum" and its programs, I began ignoring my books, and eventually gave away, sold, or lost all of them. In the last few months, I've been rebuilding that collection, via the used-book sellers at Amazon.com and Ebay. (I find it useful to check both places; the best price can be at either one.)

Why did I distance myself?

As I remember, what I really wanted at that time was to become an est trainer. I love ideas; the way the Erhard programs applied simply-articulated abstractions to real-life situations, and the way people in the programs and organization were committed to putting ideas into action, was tremendously appealing. It was a dilemma for me, though. I loved being a musician, and in my assessment I had not yet accomplished the things I wanted to accomplish.

Many people who joined the staff of est, aec or WE&A were in a place in their lives where they felt ready to let go of their prior profession. One of the most wonderful people I met in organization became the director of the Washington, D.C. "center." She had been a marvelous concert pianist; we attended the same conservatory, where she had studied with the the institutions most famous and sought-after piano teacher, Leon Fleisher. It was, and is, incredibly difficult to win a space in Fleisher's class.

It's hard to imagine that someone with that level of aptitude and accomplishment could walk away from a musical career, but she did. She was "complete" with the piano, she told me. She had discovered that she had been playing the piano to accomplish something else in her life. I don't remember exactly what; I think it had to do with pleasing/impressing her parents, and perhaps herself. After taking the est training, she no longer felt she had to prove anything to anybody, and she just wasn't interested in the piano any longer.

Here I was, about 24, at a crossroads. I had an ongoing dialogue with her. She stressed to me that she was truly "complete" with the piano in her life and had let go. My experience was that I wasn't.

It wasn't as simple as that. I had two visions: one was joining the WE&A staff with a goal of becoming a trainer and living as an unconflictedly, openly gay man. The other was to continue a life as a cellist, marry my fiance (who was totally aware of my gay-leaning bisexuality), and with her pursue a career in music.

One of the central ideas in est was that we create our own experience. In my understanding, at least (reinforced by many others), the notion was that one could choose to create any condition in life. My wife-to-be, who had also taken the training, and I "chose to create" a life in which we would be married. While I had previously come to terms with my attraction to men, I had, based primarily on my interpreation of writings by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, to think of that attraction as, for lack of a better word, a symptom of feelings of being inadequately masculine and envious of "better," more muscular bodies.

To make a long story short, I thought I could create, and was creating, a straight self. I also longed to be married, and much more than I realized, for acceptance and approval from my parents, especially my father. Both my parents were horrified by my homosexuality.

So it was an all-or-nothing situation for me. To have been genuinely authentic at that point in my life, I would have accepted myself as I was, allowed my parents to have whatever points of view they had, and gone to work for Werner Erhard. While I loved and love music, there was--and is--so much ego involved in my playing (something I will go into more detail later on) that I now honestly think staying in music was more about proving something to myself than what I really wanted to do. And I knew I couldn't remain associated with est programs, to continue to grow as an honest, open person dedicated to promoting the notion that people are fine the way they are, and continue living this life I wanted to create.

There were other factors, having to do with genuine discomfort with aspects of the WE&A organization and aspects of the recruiting/enrollment culture as well. But in many ways it was ultimately about a desire to be a married straight man and to be a fuly-accepted part of my family.

There's a passage in the Bible in which Jesus tells a young man that he cannot say goodbye to his parents if he wants to follow him. Werner Erhard is definitely not Jesus; whoever he is, I wasn't able, or willing, to leave my parents behind.